Completing a Work
Last week I completed a piece. Just days ago, I was absorbed in its compositional momentum and its specific sounds, sonorities so sweet and compelling I’d hear them in bed each morning waking me up. That piece – the Caged Bird piece – is to be sung by 75 children along with French horn and piano. Through my weeks of work on it, voices of imaginary children sang inside me, keeping me company, keeping me busy, keeping me believing there was something in the world urgently worth doing. Each day of those past two months, the imaginary sound of singing children steered me to the piano before shower or breakfast.
Five nights ago, I realized the piece was complete. I ran down to the corner mailbox in the middle of the night to send it off to the printer downtown Continue reading